summertime

Tuesday, September 08, 2015

Yesterday was Labor Day, one of the traditional bookends of summer. I wanted it to be a little more glorious, a little more right, a little more juicy, going out with a bang. It's one the last days our pool is open, and they have a few special things for all the kids - a huge bouncy house waterslide, diving for quarters (wading for rubber duckies for the littlest kids), cotton candy. The weather was glorious - hot enough for the pool, but not too humid, blazing blue sky, a few pure white clouds billowing harmlessly by.

We got there shortly after the pool opened at 11, hoping to get in some quality time before it got crowded, and before Ajax wore completely out. It started out well, with me and Helene playing in the pool, as I watched her do cannonballs and swim underwater, while Seth and Ajax played on the playground for a bit.

Then Ajax started loudly demanding a popsicle before we'd had lunch, and he refused to get in the water. I bribed him to eat with snack bar fries, and spent too much time keeping him from running off. I finally convinced him to get in the pool with the promise of a popsicle at the next break. Then Helene was upset that there were no fudgesicles in the cooler, and stomped around, unhappy with the other choices. She finally found an Astro pop, and the three of us had a momentarily sweet time eating popsicles and and ice cream sandwich (me - hey, I might not get one until next summer). Then it was time for the young kids to dive for quarters in the shallow part of the big pool. Helene didn't get in at the very first second to scramble for quarters, and was extremely upset that she only got two quarters, while a friend got five. She sobbed and asked to go home. At the same moment she was begging to go home, Ajax was finally having fun playing in the toddler pool. I was sitting on the edge of the cool, blue water while Helene cried, and it was a glorious summer day, and Katy Perry's "Firework" was playing over the pool loudspeaker, the kind of song you exactly want to hear on a great pool day, and I thought, isn't there any way to redeem this day, any way for me to bask in this one last day of summer?

And really, there wasn't. Helene remained despondent, curling in a ball on the chaise under her towel. The whistle blew for the next swim break, and I realized both kids might not be completely over a virus that felled them on Thursday, and damn, my throat hurts and I'm tired. So we left, rolling out just as some of our friends were arriving. both kids falling asleep in the car in minutes.

Seth volunteered to sit in the car with the sleeping kids, so I went inside the house, showered, ran a load of pool laundry, emptied out all the pool tote bags, stowing the goggles and sunscreen, and stashing the bags in a closet until next summer.

Helene and I watched Brave and ate popcorn. We tried to keep Ajax from destroying everything in the house, and endured Helene complaining about having used up all her iPad time and that she was SO BORED.

I wanted today, this near to last glorious summer day, to be better. I wanted it to last longer. I wanted to be outside under that sun-drenched sky, watching my kids in the blue water, feeling the 20-something Katy Perry emotion. More, better, more, longer. I feel like my whole summer was longing for ever more. Like we didn't do quite enough - not enough time outside, not enough time at the beach, not enough pool weekends, not enough al fresco dining, not enough walking to get ice cream, not enough peaches or watermelon or caprese salad. What would it take to feel like enough?

Ajax is still kind of hard and labor intensive. He's still a toddler, with all the impulse and energy and little moderation. He still needs a nap. I keep thinking, next summer, when he doesn't need a nap, when he's toilet trained, when he's not so crazy. Helene by herself is usually great - six is such a fun age for so many things. Today wasn't typical, and I have to remember that. But why did her moodiness have to be today, this last day? Why couldn't it have been a month ago, when we still had weeks of pool time left?

I just wanted more, better, from this day. I'm trying not to let disappointment drag me down, as I feel the melancholy of the impending season change coming.

I went through all my photos of this summer, and posted some of my favorites below, to try to remember all that we did do, even as I still long for more. More of all that, please. More.

Wednesday, September 10, 2014

It helped that this summer was unusual and ridiculous, in terms of gorgeous weather for a DC summer. Never in 14 summers here have I ever before worn a CARDIGAN OUTDOORS in July or August. But this was the year. Clear blue skies, low humidity, temperatures not above the mid-80's. We all thought, oh, this is what summer is like in civilized places. I had forgotten.

It was almost not hot enough to go to the pool, crazy as that sounds. Nonetheless, our nanny Janine and Ajax absolutely got our money's worth out of our pool membership. They went almost every day, and knew everyone at the pool by the end of the summer. Ajax gathered many girlfriends of all ages, and we could hardly go to the pool without him wanting to say hello to someone. He was particularly enamored of a group of 5 or 6 elderly women who get together to pool walk and swim every day. It was pretty adorable.

Big boy, eating his sandwich at the pool.

Helene swam almost every day of summer, either at camp or our pool or the Y on Martha's Vineyard. I am astonished by how good her swimming is now. We went to a pool birthday party for one of her friends over Labor Day weekend, and she was easily the best swimmer among her peers. She does the things I remember doing over and over and over again as a kid, just because you could: cannonballs, dives to touch the bottom, flipping over to float on her back. This girl, who would barely put her face in the water at the beginning of the summer, has turned into a fish.

In the hot tub on the Vineyard. Highlights Ajax's scraped-up face from a wipeout on the tennis court.

This was also Helene's summer to try out a few new things: tennis camp (she loved it, and was mad she could only do one week); and pony camp (she loved that so much we had to sign her up for another week). Between tennis camp, and some coaching on the Vineyard from a tennis coach friend (and one of the best teachers of anything that I've ever seen), the girl can whack the ball pretty well. So! More tennis to come, more, next year.

He only wants the BIG racquet.

With pony camp, I was afraid I was signing her up because I really want to do pony camp (I miss riding) and feared she wouldn't like it. Nope. Loved it. The farm she goes to is lovely, and the young women (college students mostly) who run the camp are fantastic. It's also just so different from the things she can do in DC - she's on a horse farm with a view of the ocean every day, outside, caring for animals, learning to ride, getting dirty (in nice, clean, non-city dirt!). I'm delighted in every cockle of my heart that she loved it.

Of course, all our time the Vineyard is fantastic, because it's one of our favorite, favorite places, and not just because of the family and friends on hand to help entertain our children. It's just beautiful, and peaceful, and the air smells like pine trees and brine, we go to sleep to the sounds of water and crickets, and birds sing us awake.

I will admit that it wasn't quite as relaxing as in past years, primarily because Ajax is at the "mobile with not quite enough sense" toddler age. Where he just wants to GO and CLIMB and GET INTO THINGS and do things that mind-numb adults, like push the jogging stroller around the driveway approximately forever, and you just have to SUPERVISE and ENTERTAIN and KEEP HIM FROM KILLING OR MAIMING HIMSELF allllllll the time. It was a hair more relaxing last year when he still just laid or sat on a blanket and didn't go anywhere. My wine got spilled or abandoned much less.

But some things were so much fun - watching him be able to push open the screen doors himself, and want to pick blueberries every day (even if some days that was at 6 am). And you don't have to be quite so close or quite so vigilant, because we're not on busy Capitol Hill streets, but at the end of a rural road, with no traffic, and swaths of lawn and wooden deck and woods in all directions.

It's important to dine al fresco on the Vineyard.

The blueberries - it was a bumper crop this year, and Helene and one of Seth's aunts discovered some bushes that no one really knew about, a little way from the house. Helene and a family friend made surprise blueberry muffins for dessert one night, with berries just picked. Ajax could not believe the miracle of one of his favorite fruits just growing on trees where he could stuff as many in his mouth as possible, mostly the ripe, blue ones. (One of the biggest letdown moments of coming home was him running out into our tiny backyard one morning, calling "boo-berries, booberries!" Oh buddy. We can't do that here. Next year, OK?)

(Next year, next year, he will be easier, he will be older. It will be easier every year.)

As if all that weren't enough, of course there was the carousel, and mini golf, and the arcade, and fireworks, and a farm where we fed goats and chased ducks, and so-fresh fish, and eating outside, and open windows for cool ocean breezes all night, and runs on my favorite trail, and the Agricultural Fair, and a little bit of beach time, and never enough time, and we still haven't done it all.

Grabbing for the brass ring.

Trying to catch minnows.

(Next year, next year.)

DC summer gave us one last whack this weekend, pushing into the mid-90's. Conveniently, the pool was open for one last weekend, so we spent one last, perfect day there. The water was warm, the skies deep blue, with some clouds scudding over, it wasn't crowded, as everyone's gone back to their school-year routines and sports and errands. One last leap by Helene into the water, one last time catching her, one last exploration of the grounds by Ajax, one last Popsicle and ice cream sandwich. Tired and starving, we ordered pizza for dinner, played on the front stoop with the neighbors until it came, and watched movies in the basement.

And now, I guess, it's over. Even though it flew so fast, I don't feel as bereft as I've felt some years. Maybe I've had enough pool laundry for awhile, or maybe I really am ready for apples and pumpkins and falling leaves. Maybe. But I think that really, I'm going to be wearing my flip flops and grilling and sitting outside and catching every bit of sun for as long as I can, and thinking about next year.

Tuesday, July 15, 2014

How is it possible that we are *this deep* into summer, and it's rolling away so fast, with really only six viable weeks left before Helene is back in school, and we are back at work with no beach and pool in our immediate sight?

Helene's first three-week session of day camp is over, and the second session has begun, and it has flown by. We've already been on one whirlwind trip to the Vineyard for the Fourth of July, we haven't been to the pool or the wading pool park nearly enough, the weeds in my gardens are too high, the daylilies are almost blown, the Black Eyed Susans are blooming, and it's all going too damn fast.

I feel that we have excelled at the consumption of Popsicles, watermelon, and ice cream, so I've got that in the plus column anyhow.

My other goal for summer is always to be outside! as! much! as! possible! and judging by the fact that I am a shade or two less pale than usual, I am succeeding at that. Biking to work, morning runs, telework days, leaving work early to pick up Helene from the camp bus on the bike - I think all of those are helping. Along with my insistence that EVERYONE GOES OUTSIDE TO PLAY so long as it is not 100 degrees or pouring rain.

Favorite things so far:

-Taking Ajax to the pool and beach for the first time. He absolutely vibrated with excitement the first time he saw the pool this year. He adored the boat ride to the beach on the Vineyard, and sat so still, so alertly, not scared at all.

-Turning Ajax loose with the hose. That is a dream come true for an 18-month old, let me tell you.

-Watching Helene play with her cousins over the Fourth weekend. The three of them played so well for most of the weekend, entertaining each other while us adults sat blissfully on our butts and read our books and drank our wine. Sometimes, age five is the best.

-Seth's 41st picnic birthday party in Lincoln Park. Helene decorated the cake (it was masterful - all the kids agreed), we made gallons of sangria, invited a bunch of friends, and had an awesome time. Seth declares he wants to do this every year. (And so we shall!) Makes me envious of his summer birthday.

(It says Happy Birthday Seth somewhere under all the sprinkles)

-The two perfect-condition, perfect-fitting, designer sundresses that I bought for cheap when I stopped on impulse in a neighborhood consignement shop.

-Listening to Helene read us books at story time. It astounds me to my core, what she can read. Big words! Long words! I swoon.

-Listening to the new words that Ajax says every day. Favorites are when he brings me a book, says "lap!" and plops himself down to be read to. He is obsessed with the neighbor's gentle Siamese cat, who is allowed outside, and who wanders the yards and alley. Ajax goes to the back door, plaintively saying "meow! meow!" when he wants to go look for the cat. Hilariously, he tells us endlessly that the (many) knives in our kitchen are "sharp!", as he points at them. Also hilarious is his use of the word "stuck!" which can apply to a thing actually being stuck somewhere, or to Ajax being "stuck" on the changing table or in his high chair and wanting out. I die when he clearly says "bye" in his tiny little voice, and yesterday, he killed me with a "thank you!"

Only six weeks left, to splash and slurp and soak up the sun and make the light-dazzled memories that will tide us over through winter, until next year.

*puts on flip flops, goes out to grill burgers and buy ice cream and set the patio table for dinner*